Gimme Shelter
This story was written for Zenaga the Serpent's AU Contest, which runs until the end of the month (so if you can write a fic in 10 days, you should totally check it out!)
The particular fictional setting in this story is Evan Dorkin and Jill Thompson's Beasts of Burden, a Dark Horse comic about housepets battling evil in New England. If you're interested (and you should be, because it's a fantastic little series), the first three BoB stories are available for free on Dark Horse's website.
Aside from BoB, research for this fic was done on Wikipedia and the Obakemono Project, though (as in "I Carry Your Heart"), the legit mythological stuff is mixed in with stuff I completely made up. But BoB isn't too stringent about its magic either, so I think I'm okay. Numbers in parentheses indicate a footnote, but the footnotes aren't required reading.
Also, a big thank-you to ImmortalxSnow, who was a big help in editing this.
Disclaimer: All the characters who appear in this story belong to Reiko Yoshida, Mia Ikumi, and Kodansha Ltd. The setting (or at least the rules of the setting) belongs to Dorkin and Thompson.
It was a lovely, sunny afternoon, which meant that the four cats were just lounging about, not doing anything in particular. Alto had come here brimming with excitement about magic (as usual), but all he, Asano, and Jaqueline could manage was a slow, sleepy conversation about nothing in particular. Francois, for his part, wasn't even trying: he had been curled up in a fat little ball for the past ten minutes, purring in his sleep.
Jaqueline was the first one to notice the little dog trotting into her yard, and she nudged her mate until he looked too.
"Did you invite him?" Asano asked Alto, who looked startled at being interrupted. He looked around until he saw who the mottled cat was talking about, then let out a low hiss of annoyance.
"Miki," Alto said once the little dog was close enough. "What brings you here? Finally realized that I'm wiser than you'll ever be?" He didn't actually dislike the Pomeranian, who was enlightened enough not to instinctively fear a cat practicing magic—which was a rare and precious quality in an apprentice Wise Dog—but today was too warm and lovely to spoil with dog-talk.
"Don't even start with me, Alto. I'm not in the mood. Did you know that Zakuro went missing?" Immediately, Alto's hackles rose, his eyes narrowed, and his ears flattened back against his head.
"Yeah, I heard. Almost a week ago, right? And I suppose you think I kidnapped her? Typical dog," he replied derisively.
"I said don't start with me, rat-breath. I don't think anything of the sort, and you know it. Problem is, not everyone is as... open-minded about having a witch-cat in the neighborhood as I am. Have you heard that there's something going on in the woods behind the temple?" Miki asked.
"That sounded like superstitious nonsense to me, Miki. Nothing strange has happened here in over a year. The dogs are probably just getting jumpy."
"Be that as it may, I don't like the timing of this. Something supposedly appears in the woods just as our Wise Dog goes missing? I'm bringing it to your attention because, well, word on the street is that you're behind it," Miki said. As Alto opened his mouth, the Pomeranian added, "I told you, I don't believe that. For one thing, if you had done anything, I'd never hear the end of you gloating about it."
"You and me both, pal," Francois interjected with a yawn before apparently going back to sleep.
"But I'm just an apprentice Wise Dog, and I'm not well-liked around here because... Well, because I talk to you. And if Zakuro doesn't turn up soon, there's going to be a pack breaking down your door. It would mean a lot for the community if you'd help me find her..."
Alto seriously considered saying no. It wasn't any of his business if the community (the community of dogs, of course) couldn't keep track of its Wise Dog. Aside from Miki (and, perhaps the Wise Dog herself, who he'd never met in the flesh), they were all afraid of him—but not, sadly, afraid enough to leave him alone; just enough to harass him whenever they saw him on the streets. Even Miki wanted to keep his magic species-exclusive, and Alto wasn't going to support such an unjust—
"We'd be happy to help you track her down," Asano said, correctly interpreting Alto's expression. He nuzzled Jaqueline affectionately, then lept down from the low balcony where they'd been curled up.
Miki smiled. "Thank you, Asano. Are the rest of you good to go as well?" He looked straight at Alto. "You're the only other person in town with any kind of magical experience, and I'd rather have your help than try to convince a pack of dogs to come along."
Alto tried not to look to pleased that a Wise Dog (even if he was just an apprentice) was practically begging him for help. "All right, Miki, if these guys want to help, I'm in as well."
"Sure," Francois said, stretching. "It's about time something exciting happened around here." Jaqueline got to her feet, but looked hesitant about coming down from the balcony. "C'mon, babe, don't pretend like you've never been out of the house before." Asano hissed at him, but Jaqueline didn't need her mate to defend her.
"It's not that," she explained, nervously combing her whiskers with one lilac paw. "I just worry about my guardian. He understands that Asano's an outside cat at heart, but he gets so lonely when I'm not there..." she turned to look back into her house.
"Please, miss, we could really use your company. If it gets too late, you can head back here, but four of us really isn't enough to form a protective circle," Miki said with a whine.
"Is five?" she asked back, looking at Alto. "I thought you said at least six..."
"As long as we're not up against anything too big, five should be fine," Miki said. "And I'm not expecting us to run into anything strange. It's just that..."
"You don't know what else could have made a Wise Dog go missing?" Alto finished. "I understand."
"C'mon, darling," Asano said, looking up at his mate. "It's wonderful that you worry about Ijuuin-san, but I promise he'll survive without you for a few hours."
With a final, lingering look back inside, Jaqueline hopped down to the others.
o()o
The whole town felt like dogs. Alto didn't actually see any dogs as he and his friends padded along behind Miki. No one growled at him from behind a sitting-room window; no one barked at him through a fence, yet the air felt electric with canine presences. Alto could practically smell their beady eyes on him. His whiskers wanted to twitch and his hackles wanted to rise, but he followed Miki as though there was nothing wrong. No reason to give those sons of bitches the satisfaction of seeing him squirm.
They stopped by the bakery where Alto lived first, so the gray cat could pick up some magic supplies, then headed out toward the temple. As they neared the edge of town, Jaqueline was smelling increasingly nervous, not to mention looking behind her every other step. For a moment, Alto wondered if someone was following them after all. It wasn't until Asano nuzzled her reassuringly that Alto realized this was probably the farthest she'd ever been away from Ijuuin-san. Alto didn't really understand her trepidation: His owner trusted him enough to let him roam, and their relationship was all the better for it.
"If you need someone to comfort you, Jaqueline..." Francois said leeringly, even though her tail was currently entwined with her mate's.
Asano batted the fat cat on the nose, but his claws were sheathed, and Francois looked unabashed. Jaqueline and Alto ignored them as they started to tussle, far too used to the way the two of them interacted to pay them any mind.
"Seriously, are you all right?" Alto asked. "If you don't want to do this, we can find someone else." For the life of him, he couldn't think of who else they could find, but Jaqueline just radiated worry. Miki, who had noticed that the cats weren't making much forward progress, trotted up to them before she could answer.
"These two don't look like they're taking this very seriously," the Pomeranian said dryly.
"They may not be, but we certainly are, sir," Jaqueline replied, her too-blue eyes hard as diamonds. "Darling! Come on! You too, Francois!"
Miraculously, both toms listened to her.
o()o
The temple was mostly empty, and no one gave the group a second glance as they headed out behind it to where the mountain forest brushed up against the manicured temple grounds. There was a permanent stone circle a little ways into the trees. Zakuro had set it up years ago, when the town was still beleaguered by supernatural danger. There hadn't been any such danger in a year, as far as Alto knew, and the circle looked like it had stood empty for about that long.
The five of them searched the circle clearing for nearly an hour, but found no clues to Zakuro's whereabouts until Miki caught her scent going deeper into the woods. With the Pomeranian in the lead, they headed away from the temple, Jaqueline still occasionally glancing nervously behind her. Every few meters, Alto dropped a pebble from the pack of magical supplies around his neck. The pebbles were specially treated to light up when he gave the word. As Zakuro's trail lead farther out than any of them had ever been, Alto was glad he had taken such a precaution, since he was confident that with a magical trail to follow, he could lead the others home if he had to.
They were still in the forest when the sun set and a thick fog rolled in between the trees. Asano stuck close to Jaqueline, and his tail whipped agitatedly back and forth as though it could fend off threats by itself.
o()o
"Look at that!" Jaqueline exclaimed nervously, pushing even closer to her mate, though whatever she was looking at remained, to the rest, obscured by the oppressive fog. Miki, using his nose to navigate, rushed ahead of the others, so focused on what he was doing that he ran into the thing.
It was a canine skull, completely picked clean of flesh and sticking out of the ground as though someone had gotten called away midway through burying their dog. It was also almost as big as the Pomeranian, who yelped and jumped back, shivering. After an agonizingly long moment, the cats caught up with him and just stared at the skull. It grinned dully back at him, the flickering forest shadows making it look like a living thing.
"I-it's Zakuro," the little dog whimpered, still shaking violently.
"So we found her?" Asano asked, audibly shaken. As a former street cat, not a lot got to him, but he'd never seen anything like this before. "Some sicko killed her and buried her?"
"Not quite," Alto answered, tapping the Wise Dog's skull with one extended claw. He sniffed it dispassionately, evidently less disturbed by the grisly sight than the others were. "She's been here far too long. I don't have the ingredients here to date a carcass, but even in the forest, there's no way her bones could be picked clean in a week."
"He's right," Miki said mournfully as he covered his nose with his forepaws. She's been here, I don't know, years. Probably several years. But that doesn't make any sense..."
"Isn't this weird?" Francois asked from behind the group. The others whirled around to glare at him for being so flippant during what even Alto knew was a serious moment. But the overweight cat wasn't paying attention to Zakuro's skull at all. He has cleared the leaves, dirt, and other forest detritus off of what appeared to be a fine porcelain plate. "Who'd leave a nice plate like this in the forest next to some dead dog?"
Miki and Alto looked at each other in shock for a moment. "Inugami," they breathed simultaneously.
"I'm sorry, inu-what?" Francois said. Neither Miki nor Alto paid him any mind.
"Let's not jump to conclusions," Miki said, making a valiant effort to calm himself down. "Whatever's happened to Zakuro—if this dog even is Zakuro—we can do a circle and ask for ourselves what's going on." The others looked at him skeptically; he growled. "Come on, guys. I know this isn't what we expected to find, but I'm the Wise Dog here. Circle up."
Miki traced a circle in the forest floor with his paw and scratched a rei (1) inside of it, taking care not to touch the skull in the center. They sat nose-to-tail along the inner edge of
"We call on the spirit of Zakuro, Wise Dog of Hinode. If you are here, make yourself known!" Miki barked. The five of them laid in silence for what seemed like days before the dense fog poured into the circle and coalesced into the dead dog's familiar form. Her body was a foggy blue-purple, a stark contrast to her usual red and white coat, but she was unmistakably the dead Wise Dog from the tip of her pointed ears to the end of her curled tail (2).
"Miki?" she asked, in a chilling voice that less keen ears might have mistaken for wind howling though the trees. It was a still night, and the Pomeranian knew his teacher was talking to him.
"I'm here, Zakuro. What happened to you? We—" he motioned to the cats who were, for the most part, sitting wide-eyed staring that apparition. Alto appeared to be concentrating furiously, presumably trying to commit the conditions of the summoning to memory. He'd read about this in books, but had never witnessed anything like it personally until now. "—came to try to find you after you disappeared, but I don't know what's going on here!"
"I trained you too well, Miki," Zakuro replied. The warmth in her spectral voice was so incongruous as to be unsettling. "I should have known you'd find me. As for what's going on, I trust you remember what an inugamiis."
Miki opened his mouth to respond, but Alto cut in before the little dog could get a word out. "An inugami is the spirit of a dog that was buried up to its neck and left to starve with food just out of reach. They're considered excellent protective spirits, but are prone to turn on their masters if not treated well and kept busy," the gray cat explained smugly.
"Smart cat," Zakuro said, wagging her curled tail in approval. "That's exactly right."
"But isn't your owner a little girl, Zakuro?" Miki protested. "Momoka would never—"
"You didn't live here when the hauntings started, Miki. Momoka's dad wasn't around any more than he is now, but he didn't want to leave his little girl unprotected. I didn't have a choice about sacrificing myself, but if I had gotten to choose, please believe that I would have made the same choice he did."
"So you've been dead all this time? Then why'd you disappear now?"
"You don't need me any more. There haven't been any supernatural threats in a full year, and your cat friend said it himself: an inu-gami turns on its master when it's not kept occupied. I don't—I've been feeling the urge to do terrible things to Momoka, and I will not allow myself to succumb to that. I had her father lead me back to my body, and I can't find the way out of the woods from here. It's for the best," the inugami added, seeing Miki's horrorstruck look. "I don't know if I could control myself if I found my way back to town. I would rather remove the temptation entirely."
Francois glanced back (in what he probably thought was a furtive manner) at Alto's trail of magic pebbles. Zakuro followed his gaze, and her spectral eyes widened.
"You idiots! I can't know the way back..." she howled, but her ghostly form had already taken off down the path the little stones laid out. The cats and Miki broke their circle and dashed after the ghost.
"We've got to stop her!" Miki yelped. "She's obviously not in control of herself, and if she gets back to Hinode, there's no telling—"
"No, it's my fault she's loose," Alto said in a low, grim voice. "I have to be the one to stop her."
As he ran, he nosed around in his pouch until he surfaced with a dried leaf in his mouth. Chewing the leaf, he hissed a spell that made his pebbles flare up into nearly blinding brightness. Ahead of them, Zakuro's ghost stumbled in the blaze, but she righted herself and kept on running. Alto swore under his breath.
"Here, let me," Miki said, bounding ahead of the gray cat. "Xunchi shaoshang! (3)" A line of fire blazed up along the pebbles, and Zakuro stumbled again. "Now, Alto!"
Still chewing the leaf, the cat recast his invocation. This time, with the addition of Miki's fire, the inugami fell completely to the ground, burning and writhing.
"Gongkai fangqi bu toushui!" Miki barked.
Zakuro howled as the spell pinned her to the forest floor. They hadn't stopped her a moment too soon: Alto could see part of a temple wall through the trees. "Zakuro, Wise Dog of Hinode, your labor is done. Go on to your rest," Miki intoned gravely.
Immediately, Zakuro's pain appeared to subside; she got quiet and stopped struggling against her invisible bonds.
As her form began to melt back into the surrounding fog, she said with a voice like rustling leaves, "Thank you, Miki. You'll make as good a Wise Dog as this town's ever seen. You have my blessing. All of you do as well," she added, nodding toward the cats with a head that was barely there. And then, after a moment, there was nothing in the woods with them but fog.
"C'mon, darling, let's get you home," Asano said, breaking the silence as he nuzzled Jaqueline. She twisted around to look back at Alto, but didn't seem to know what to say.
Alto was the one who ultimately spoke. "Thank you for coming out tonight. I know it wasn't much fun, but we couldn't have done it without you. When you see Francois, tell him the same thing." The fat stray had already melted away into the fog somewhere.
"So... I'm the Wise Dog now," Miki said once Jaqueline and Asano were out of sight. "Which means I need a new apprentice... And I only know one animal with any sort of magical talent."
"Are you asking me? What'll the dogs think?"
"Sure am. They can think what they like; I don't give a rat's ass. But before you answer, keep in mind that you'll have to take orders from me," the little dog said with a smile.
Alto let out a low, rumbling purr. "I think I can live with that."
Footnotes:
1. Specifically, 霊, a character that means "ghost" or "departed soul." Also, this ritual is a slight Japanization of the summoning rituals performed in Beasts of Burden, and has roughly nothing to do with proper Japanese spiritualism.
2. Zakuro is an Akito inu. As a Pomeranian, Miki is seriously about the size of her head.
3. The spells that appear in this fic appear in BoB canon, only here they're questionable Chinese instead of questionable Latin. They are, respectively, a fire spell and a binding spell.